


over and over and over again

by emmisaysmufasa



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Post-Canon, im so sorry, this is Not a fix it fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 01:15:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20648813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmisaysmufasa/pseuds/emmisaysmufasa
Summary: richie's road to recovering post IT: Chapter 2. I'm sorry, it's not a fix-it, but I think it ends on a hopeful note like the movie kinda did.





	over and over and over again

**Author's Note:**

> title is from south london forever by florence and the machine bc it makes me think of Them

He feels like he's breaking apart.  
He hears splashing, laughter.   
But not his.  
It'll never be His laughter again. His sweet dark eyes, his feisty temperature despite being so short. It'll never be his arms around him, like the others are doing now. He wants to be thankful that any of them survived. He wants to be thankful that his friends are holding him, letting him fall apart and not questioning him. They already know- maybe they always have, since they were thirteen and fighting over that stupid hammock. He wants to be thankful that he's alive, but right now he's not. He thinks back to him washing the blood off his glasses. His blood. And yet a small part of him hadn't wanted to clean it off, because it was the only piece of Eddie Kaspbrak that he had left. He sits and he hurts, and his friends let it. They stay silent long enough for Richie to feel able to speak again.   
"Thank you guys." Attempting a shot at humor as his friends hold him tighter he adds "I don't have my glasses so I don't know who you guys are-" they all laugh- "But thanks." Their bond is the kind that only people who have been broken together can share. They let it heal.

Richie tries not to go back and think about what may have been. He tries not to imagine Eddie making it, telling Eddie how he felt. Maybe even Eddie feeling the same. He tries not to imagine if he'd even had him for a moment, if he'd just sucked up the courage and admitted his feelings before it happened. Before the chance was ripped away from him. He knows it won't change anything, but he still lies under the covers, huddled up with Eddie's hoodie, trying to believe it still smells of him. He wishes it was him who was gone instead.

It's a long road to recovering from watching Eddie die. He doesn't know if he'll ever fully recover, not really. But maybe that's okay. Maybe it's his way of holding on to him, remembering him. His energy would never really die.   
It started with completely cutting out alcohol. For months after Derry, he'd drank himself to sleep more nights than not, ignoring meetings and phone calls. He tipped his bottles down the sink, and he regretted it the moment he heard a song on the radio that always made him think of Eddie. Eds. His Eds.  
Next he comes out. It takes sessions of therapy, and he obviously can't reveal a lot of his past. But those scars he had started to heal over, Henry Bowers and his cousin in the arcade becoming a faint memory again.   
He starts writing his own material, and sure, it turns people away. He regrets it over and over, when he gets dial tones from people who used to race to pick up the phone, for the chance to work with The Richie Trashmouth Tozier.   
But when he gets a message on instagram, anonymous, thanking him, telling him he made them feel less alone... he doesn't regret a thing. 

He's nowhere near fixed. He never could be, really. The same as the others. They'd always be those kids who put up posters in Ben's clubhouse, who bickered and laughed, who swam in the quarry together, they would always be those kids who fought a shape shifting demon at the age of 13.   
They would always be losers. Him, Bev, Ben, Mike, Bill. Stan and Eddie, too.  
And Richie was okay with that.


End file.
